Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The creature behind them jerked and moaned, and Harry and Dumbledore sat without talking for the longest time yet. The realisation of what would happen next settled gradually over Harry in the long minutes, like softly falling snow.

‘I’ve got to go back, haven’t I?’

 ‘That is up to you.’

‘I’ve got a choice?’

‘Oh yes.’ Dumbledore smiled at him. ‘We are in King’s Cross, you say? I think that if you decided not to go back, you would be able to … let’s say … board a train.’

‘And where would it take me?’

‘On,’ said Dumbledore simply.

Silence again.

Harry let the silence engulf him, for just a moment. Silence was a luxury, he knew now, with the foresight that he was about to return to a battle he might not win. But must.

 He looked to the side of the station, where a brilliant golden steam train had pulled up along the tracks. Through the windows Harry could see figures, blurred as if through a pane of streaming water. He knew who they would be. Harry knew that if he boarded the steps of the steam engine and made his way to that carriage, he would find his family.

 Lily and James Potter. Sirius Black and Remus Lupin and Tonks as well, smiling and bubble-gum pink and alive. Fred Weasley, making the three marauders laugh until they cried. Perhaps family members he had never even thought to dream of: grandparents and great aunts and second cousins, with his hair or his dark golden skin or his knobbly knees.

 It was a world- an entire lifetime of stolen opportunities- that Harry gave up in the step he took away from that train.

 He thought, suddenly, of the pointlessness of conquering death when you could never go back. Never save those who had been lost. Whose lives had streamed out like the tendrils of fading white steam that floated away from that shining gold train.

 Leaving this place would not be nearly as hard as walking into the Forest had been, but it was warm and light and peaceful here, and he knew that he was heading back to pain and the fear of more loss.

He stood up, and Dumbledore did the same, and they looked for a long moment into each other’s faces.

‘Tell me one last thing,’ said Harry. ‘Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?’

 Dumbledore beamed at him, and his voice sounded loud and strong in Harry’s ears even though the bright mist was descending again, obscuring his figure.

‘Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?’

So, Harry Potter stepped forward, resigned to face his future.

 It was with great surprise, then, that Harry's eyes did not open to find the gathered mulch floor of a forest clearing.

He opened his eyes and-

 Steam streamed out from the chimney of a scarlet steam engine. A caged owl hooted from the top of a precariously stacked pile of trunks. Harried families flowed past him with excited first years and moody teenagers in tow.

 Harry Potter left the stark white train station of death and found himself in another terminal. This one in a vivid, screaming technicolour he hadn't been witness to in years.

 Platform 9 and ¾, King's Cross.

 And one other impossible thing. He knew with a grave certainty that was uncommon to him that he was once again eleven years old.

 What, the seventeen-year-old soldier trapped inside his eleven-year-old body thought, the actual fuck.

*****Hermione Jean Granger*****

Hermione Granger had been sitting in her compartment, people watching, for only ten minutes when the thin boy with dark hair and skin a few shades lighter than hers appeared out of thin air. This, she was sure, was the sort of surprised reaction that would be worn out of her after even only a few days at Magic School. It was certainly a common occurrence, she was sure, for young boys to appear out of nowhere, looking stunned and horrified at their surroundings. Nothing to worry about.

 Probably nothing to worry about.

 The problem was, Hermione Granger didn’t like Probable. She liked certainty, clarity, surety. So even if she was almost, quite really, just about, certain that this was nothing sort of normal for wizards, she still didn’t stop staring at the boy. He was short, shorter she was sure than even she was, and terribly skinny in that way that people are when they’ve missed too many important breakfasts. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, as Jean Granger was sure to espouse any time Hermione even looked as if she might consider the possibility of not finishing her bowl of muesli.

 This boy could be blown away by a strong breeze. He already seemed to be swaying. Hermione was suddenly vividly reminded of the feeble-nerved mothers who clutched their pearls and fainted delicately when faced with a great shock in all her classic novels about rich white people having rich white problems. The boy was whipping his head around now, mimicking the frantic barn owl caged a few feet from him with a family of red heads. The boy’s eyes seemed to bulge out of his head when he spotted the redheads. Perhaps he had a phobia of them, she thought.

 This was the second thing you must learn about Hermione Jean Granger. Her solutions weren’t always the most logical (or the most likely to be true outside the confines of her classic swooning romance novels) but she made sure to have a solution to absolutely everything, anyway. Gingerphobia, she thought with satisfaction.

 But the boy didn’t look like he wanted to run away from the redheads. In fact, his face screamed with the exact same expression her old cat had adopted anytime the fridge was opened. Pure, desperate wanting. Hermione watched, fingers itching to grab her notebook out of her rucksack so she could write down her observations and come to a correct conclusion about the mystery, when the boy turned his head-

 And looked her dead in the eyes.

 Hermione would swear until her dying day, she was sure, that the boy mouthed her name in shock.

 Hermione gaped back at him. She was just about to mouth something back at him, make first contact as they say, when a tower of trunks floated by (with magic!) and blocked the boy from view. When her eye line finally cleared, she caught only scraggy black hair disappearing into the crowd.

  Hermione Granger had probably been born brilliant. She would like it noted for prosperity that ’probably’ is a qualifier used here only due to a lack of quantifiable proof. Her mother swears she’d had the little wooden cylinder block through the circle hole after only a moments consideration.

 But if she was always brilliant, or if brilliance hit her one fine morning like some kind virus, the end result was the same. The end result was always the same for brilliant children. Loneliness. Lunchtimes spent alone reading Jane Austen books even though, honestly, she still thought of love and kissing as ‘icky’. Despite how desperately, unrelentingly and woefully Hermione Granger wanted a friend, the need was still outweighed by her pathological need to be right. Always. And to make sure that people were aware she was right. Always.

 She had accepted rather early on what her future would look like. Birthday teas with just her parents. Sitting alone on the buses to school trips.

 Then September came, as it unfailingly did, and with it her eleventh birthday. Set to be just another rerun of the previous years, this year had featured an impromptu guest. Magical Professor McGonagall with her ability to turn in to a cat, and her magic wand, and her Yes, young Hermione is a witch, too. Yes. There is a magic school full of children just like her.   

 Suddenly, it didn’t seem all that bad to have a future full of no friends but her parents. Hermione Granger had magic. Hermione Granger would always be magical.

Who needed friends?

 Hermione was pretty sure this boy needed a friend. Or a psychologist. (She filed away a memo in her mind to ask for more information about magical healthcare and mental health attitudes)

 The Disappearing Boy had blown into Hermione’s compartment like a messy haired storm only a few minutes after he’d disappeared on the platform. He’d flung her compartment door open, stepped in, and proceeded to gape at her like a fish.

 When she’d tentatively offered him a hello, he’d made a strangled, dying cat sound in the back of his throat, and landed heavily on the opposite bench of seats, head in hands.

 She’d caught a few mutterings here and there. Mostly they were curses that would make even her Cousin Monty, who’d worked on the oil rigs since age 18, blush. Then there were the odd phrases like ‘oh my merlin, eleven’ and ‘Christ on a cracker what am I going to do’ and a repeated refrain of ‘platform nine and fucking three quarters’.

Hermione hadn’t decided if she was someone who was comfortable with swearing yet, but she was sure it didn’t count if it was a direct quotation in one’s own mind.

 “Um,” She hedged, lightly, “May I offer you a Tunnock bar for your troubles?”

Hermione wasn’t certain, but she was pretty sure a magical society would expect a more formal manner of speech. She’d been practicing on her barbie dolls. Her barbie dolls that she most definitely didn’t play with anymore, and anyway even if she did it was only to re-enact her favourite scenes from Much Ado About Nothing and Emma, and so really it didn’t count anyway.

 The boy looked up at her, startled, and stared at the red and gold foil wrapped biscuit in her hand.

“My mum made me bring a whole packet, to share. ” Hermione explained. Then cursed herself when she realised she hadn’t said that ‘Witchily’ at all, “Um, forsooth.” she added, but it came out more like a question.

The boy took the Tunnock bar with shaky hands. He seemed to stare at it with suspicion for far longer than necessary, before unwrapping it and devouring it in less than three whole bites. Hungry, she confirmed to herself.

 “I’m Hermione.” She said, “Um, perchance your name…. sire?” Oh, damn that for a game of soldiers, she thought. It only made her sound like a fool.

 He was certainly looking at her like she’d been a fool. “I’m Harry.” He said, voice coming out scratchy.

 “Are you…okay?” She said, and then it all came out of her in an unstoppable Hermione-style Ramble. “It’s just, I saw you appear on the platform. And I’m sure that’s normal, for magically imbued folk or whatever, its just you looked shocked, and so I thought maybe it was an accidental appearing, or that you’d appeared somewhere wrong. But you do look like someone heading to Hogwarts, I thought with your clothes you must have muggle parents but then you said merlin so I thought, of course, magical accident. Because wizards must have accidents too, right? Like high speed broom collisions and accidental tax avoidance and magicking yourself into tight corners. That must be it, right? A magical accident.”

 Hermione waited patiently for a response. Harry only gaped at her. Then, in a cracking voice he said, “Yeah, s’pose. Magical accident.” and then it was as if an invisible mask had slipped over him, and he straightened up, looking surer than he had before. “Magical accident! And this…whole thing…is just a magical accident, right. And if it’s a magical accident, which you’re right absolutely do happen I can tell you for sure Hermione, then- then this is like-.“  He stopped trying to convince himself of whatever it was and looked startled. The next thing he said under his breathe, clearly meant only for him, but Hermione still caught it.

 “Then this is like a reset. Magic is giving me a second chance.”

 His eyes glazed over. Like he was staring at something Hermione couldn’t see. Suddenly, he turned to her, a full-body grin overcoming him.

 “Hermione Granger! There is someone we both have to meet."

It took her days to realise what had struck her as odd about that, apart from the whole of it of course. She’d never told him her last name.

 Ron Weasley, who had dirt on his nose and a fat brown rat on his lap, seemed equally as baffled by Harry as Hermione was. Despite the boy’s insistence that Hermione had people she needed to meet, and the suspicious way he’d headed straight for this compartment, the two boys didn’t actually seem to know each other.

 Correction; Ron Weasley didn’t seem to have ever laid eyes on the boy in his life. Harry on the other hand looked and acted as if he had known the boy forever but kept up a flimsy persona of a cheery stranger excited to make new friends.

Hermione couldn’t help but like the boy, however, even if he was strange and getting stranger by the minute. When Ron had seemed ready to make biting comments in response to Hermione’s, admittedly, poor first impressions, Harry had cut him off with happy questions about muggle football, which had seemed to intrigue Ron despite his reluctance. This had segued into the current, seemingly never ending, explanation of ‘quidditch’ which Hermione thought sounded far too dangerous and a little bit redundant. Pointing out that the seeker seemed to make the whole game pointless didn’t exactly endear Ron towards her though. Harry had just laughed.

 Hermione, dentist’s daughter as she was, had failed at hiding her disapproval of the avalanche of food Harry bought from the Trolley. She warmed to the occasion, however, when Harry implored her to treat it as if it were a scientific investigation. Ron seemed happy to answer her endless questions about wizarding confectionary, cooking, and, because she was Hermione, dentistry. That was until he had the misfortune to chew a vomit Every-flavour-jellybean (“Every flavour? Surely it can’t mean every flavour in the entire world?”) and had had to make a mad dash for the train lavatories.

Which was when things got decidedly weirder.

“Hermione, look!” Harry shouted suddenly, pointing out of the window. Hermione whipped her head around, craning to see. There, through the impeccably clear window, was-

The English countryside.

“Whoopsie. Need glasses, me. My mistake." Harry said cheerily when she turned back in confusion after spotting nothing. “Thought I saw a cool cloud."

Which was- just strange. Though of course Hermione had been taught by her father never to judge a book by its cover, she figured it was probably acceptable to judge when the book seemed to spew a constant stream of absolute nonsense and grinned at the world as if it was viewing a rather charming absurdist play.

When Ron came back, it turned out he’d misplaced his rat. (Hermione considered Scabbers a very odd name for a supposedly loved pet). Harry threw himself into looking high and low for him, and they were joined soon by a round faced boy called Neville who had coincidentally misplaced his toad too.

 And if Hermione hadn’t known better, which she was always sure she did, and had been slightly more cynical, which she was sure was a skill that would come with age, she would have called Harry’s extreme perturbance, worry and strife over the lost rat just a tad bit exaggerated.

 Alas, Ron’s rat didn’t show up. Ron seemed rather more bothered about his older brother Percy’s reaction to the missing pet, however, than its actual wellbeing. Hermione, a consummate only child, was not one to judge. Siblings could be very stressful as her mother told her every time her dad came home from Aunty Helen’s in a huff.

 Harry calmed the ginger boy down soon with tales of the muggle world- which Hermione interrupted every now and then to correct. Especially when Harry said things that were certainly not true. Harry would respond to her accusations of untruthfulness with unflinching cheeriness, and odd assurances such as, “That’s right, not yet. But I’m sure they’ll invent it soon." before going on to tell Ron of the wonders of electric trains.

 The sun was beginning to set when the compartment door once again flew open. However, this time it wasn’t chubby Neville, but a pointy little boy with atrociously gelled back white blonde hair, a book under his arm, and two boys who were clearly lost extras from an Al Pacino movie.

 "Is it true?" he said. "They're saying all down the train that Harry Potter's in this compartment. So it's you, is it?"

To Hermione’s surprise, Harry looked vaguely excited to see the rude boy. Hermione thought he and his two shadows looked like just the sort who would nick her bookbag off her and then refuse to give it back and laugh while she tried to get it.

“Malfoy!” He said, surprise evident in his face. Then it seemed to drain suddenly of all colour. “Er…nice to see you… since we last saw each other… at …. Madam Malkin’s?”

His voice tilted up in pitch at the end, as if he wasn’t entirely sure of his own accuracy. This was the sort of thing he’d been doing all train journey, so Hermione wasn’t really surprised. The Malfoy kid looked vaguely confused for a moment, before his expression switched to that of someone who was used to everything always being right in the world when it came to him.

 “Ah, yes. Of course, you remember me.” He said smugly. Then cast a disdainful look at Ron. “Though I wouldn’t think you’d want to associate with his sor--“

 “This is my good friend, Ron.” Harry said, cutting the boy off, “My good friend. Now, Malfoy, would you like to sit with us?”

 Hermione thought there was equal part welcome and strange reluctance in Harry’s voice, though Hermione attributed that to the Malfoy boys generally unpleasant aura.

 Malfoy looked slightly stumped but was once again cut off before he could respond. This time, however, by a gaping Ron.

“You’re Harry Potter?” he gasped, “The Harry Potter?”

Malfoy looked as if all balance had once again been restored to his world. “Ha! You didn’t even know—”

“Yes, I didn’t think it was important. Now, Malfoy, are you sitting down or not?” Harry said, cutting off an increasingly baffled Malfoy once again. Harry cast a distasteful look at Malfoy’s two friends, “Sorry I don’t think there’s room for all of you.”

Hermione sort of hoped that the Malfoy boy would take this as a reason to leave. That was, until her eyes finally landed on the title of the book in the boys’ hands.

“Is that Marigold Mantras Marvellous Mustering of Miscellaneous Magical Spells?” She demanded “My mum wouldn’t let me get it, she said it was probably too advanced and superfluous to the syllabus. And also, she doesn’t really approve of rampant alliteration.”

 Malfoy stared at her, slightly alarmed, while Harry let out a baffled laugh and Ron a strangled sound of surprise.

 Malfoy, looking like someone who has lost the plot of the world rather completely and was now completely off the rails, nodded. “I- Crabbe, Goyle. Go- find somewhere else to sit or whatever.”

Then he sat down rather ungracefully next to Hermione and proceeded to begin a two-hour conversation about the book, magical theory as a whole, and Hogwarts. This surprisingly interesting conversation was interspersed by Harry’s strangely effective attempts to interrupt Ron and Malfoy’s, who it turned out was called Draco, barbs at each other’s families.

Harry also kept doing odd things, like looking towards the ceiling and saying why, and how and why me. But Harry hadn’t done a single not weird thing since Hermione had met him and so she thought that was neither here nor there.

It was nice, she decided, having friends. Even if the rather large part of her that was an insecure realist insisted it wouldn’t last for long. No one ever stayed to be friends with Hermione Granger. That was a fact.

 The sorting hat smelled like mildew. Hermione was focusing on this instead of her overwhelming fear that the hat was going to touch her head and immediately scream that she being there had been a mistake, that Hermione wasn’t really magical at all, and that actually she was so ordinary that no one should really ever bother with her at all. Then she was pretty sure she would have to be executed by the wizard with the impressive long beard for seeing things she wasn’t actually worthy of seeing.

Hermione tended to spiral into extremes when she was nervous.

A sudden laugh echoed around her head. One that she was almost certain hadn’t come from her own mind. A small, amused voice sounded suddenly in her ears.

 “And where does a curious thing like you belong, eh? Don’t worry youngling, you’ve got the right of it. You are brilliant."

Hermione took a moment to preen, before rightly panicking about the supposedly sentient mind-reading piece of headwear currently sat atop her head.

 A long three minutes later, after a spirited debate and lot of disembodied laughter she wasn’t entirely sure wasn’t aimed at her, Hermione Granger became the newest member of Gryffindor house.

She took great joy in clapping for all her new friends. Draco, who went slightly pink faced, slightly prideful, to Ravenclaw. He gave her an embarrassed nod in acknowledgement of her spirited clapping. She was one of the only ones from her table clapping. A red head with Ron’s forehead and chin looked at her in confusion and said, “You do know that’s a Malfoy, Right?”

 She hadn’t really known what that meant, apart from being a very stupid observation, and so she simply gave him a look you might give a puppy when it did a trick correctly. “Yes, well done.” She said, just a touch patronisingly.

 Then in quick succession she was joined at the red and gold table by a happy Ron and a thoughtful looking Harry, who would periodically glance over at a now blue-accented Draco in confusion.

 They spent the meal happily discussing everything about Gryffindor and Hogwarts they could think of, while devouring a splendid meal. Hermione decided she was going to like Hogwarts. Even if Harry, Ron or Draco might soon decide that she was too bossy to be friends with.

 Harry Potter was strange, Hermione couldn’t deny it. There were just certain things about the boy that didn’t seem to click. Unlike the rest of the first years, Harry never got lost and acted as if he knew every inch of the castle off by heart. When Hermione questioned this, asking if he’d ever been to Hogwarts, Harry had simply said that he’d grown up with second hand knowledge of the school from his Aunt, who had heard it from his mother.

 Then there came lessons. Harry Potter was just too good at everything. It was, she hated to think it, extremely annoying for someone like Hermione to not excel when she always had before. The worst part was the way Harry seemed to always play his own brilliance off, like there was nothing unusual about it. Hermione had watched him casually transfigure a matchstick into a pin on the first attempt, before seeming to panic. He’d then proceeded to transfigure the pin back into a match before spending the rest of the lesson pretending to struggle with the rest of the class as if he hadn’t already done it.

 Hermione, never one to brag, would nevertheless like it noted that she achieved a shiny silver pin on only her second attempt.

 Harry Potter never seemed to cease in his endless crusade to frustrate her. She was becoming used to his almost constant look of panic after he did or said something, like he felt he shouldn’t have. He seemed absolutely thrilled to personally greet and chat with everyone they crossed paths with, as if he was reuniting with lost friends. Sure, whatever, Hermione was all for socialisation but there came a point. You couldn’t just go about liking everyone you met. It was indecent. It was simply un-British.

To top it all off, the boy was just weird.

 He seemed to hold an odd vendetta against their Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher, Professor Quirrell. To Hermione, he just seemed like your run-of-the-mill unsuited-to-the-profession teacher. Sure, it was slightly odd that he seemed terrified of his own students. And sure, the garlic smell was admittedly overwhelming. But Hermione thought Harry’s obsession with Quirrell’s turban was beginning to verge on culturally insensitive.

 She couldn’t prove it, but she would stake a rather large bet on Harry’s involvement with the strange happenings that surrounded the professor’s lessons. Like the multiple times Quirrell had simply tripped over thin air, or the strange sudden gale-force wind that had flown through the classroom on their third lesson. It had sent the pages of everyone’s textbooks rifling, and many disgruntled classmates’ hats had been sent high into the air. Quirrell himself had had to clutch tightly to his turban to keep it in place. Harry acted disgruntled for a while after each of these incidents, before cheering up and moving on to what Hermione was sure was his next devilish scheme to destroy magical pedagogy as a whole.

 Quirrell wasn’t the only teacher that Harry acted strangely towards. Harry seemed to hold a strange irreverence for Professor McGonagall. Honestly Hermione couldn’t find anything too nefarious in this though. McGonagall was very quickly working her way on to Hermione’s personal hero’s list. She was just so cool.

 But then there was Snape. Ah, the tortured tale of Harry and Snape. Hermione was sure it could be a lost Shakespeare play. Harry seemed determined to avoid the professor at all costs. This became difficult of course in Snape’s own lessons. Harry had taken to slouching so low in his chair so as to avoid the teacher’s line of sight that he had more than once accidentally slid to the floor. On one of these occasions Harry had seemingly decided that the best course of action would just be to remain under the table for the entire lesson. Snape, who hadn’t spotted Harry before the boy’s impromptu trip to down under, took this as an opportunity to monologue grandly about certain boys who shall remain nameless who thought it was acceptable not to turn up to lessons and who relied too much on their unearned fame. Snape seemed rather agitated by Harry’s obvious wish to avoid him and spoiled for a fight any time Harry mistakenly made himself present in the bat-like teacher’s vicinity.

 The worst, most terrible, no-good, awful, bad thing about Harry Potter was that Hermione couldn’t help but like him. However many times a day she found herself questioning the boys sanity, truthfulness or general real-ness as a person she just couldn’t seem to stop letting him hang around her. This was probably since Harry seemed to genuinely want to hang around her. Something that had never happened to her before. Harry happily asked her questions about the books she read, her family, and her theories on magical history and its relation to the muggle counterpart. And then he seemed equally happy to listen. Even if Hermione’s rants over ran the hour mark. Or ended up on topics seemingly entirely unrelated to her starting point.

 This was unknown territory. Even Hermione’s parents tended to gently shut her down if she talked about a single topic for longer than ten minutes. Or if, as had often been the case, she had talked so long she had forgotten to do simple things like eat the meal in front of her, look where she was going or, on a memorable occasion, take a breath. Jean Granger hadn’t enjoyed driving her ten-year-old daughter to A&E the time she’d passed out and whacked her head mid rant about NHS cuts.

Hermione was very passionate about the welfare state.   

So, she began to notice a pattern in her own thoughts. Whenever Harry would do something odd or unexplainable (this occurred at least a dozen times before breakfast was even finished) she found her self thinking things like oh that’s just Harry and well, can’t expect anything different from him. This frustrated her as it echoed the idiotic people who seemed to innocuously attribute his every whim and action to the inane phrase oh, that’s just the-boy-who-lived. As if defeating a dark wizard before your second birthday somehow meant you didn’t need to adhere to normal human behaviour or the laws of the universe. That was admittedly a bit of a stretch. Hermione hadn’t seen Harry bend any of the laws of the universe. Yet.

So she kept a keen weather eye on the boy wonder at all times.

This wasn’t actually why she found herself following a suspiciously acting Harry from the common room on the second Friday into term, however. She’d fallen asleep in front of the common room fire, an open book about rare potion ingredients open on her chest. At around eleven, well after Percy Weasley had shooed everyone up to there dorms, she’d been awakened by the sound of the portrait hole opening.

She caught a fleeting and incriminating glance of Harry Potter leaving the common room with a shoe box in his hands. A suspicious shoebox.

In hot pursuit, Hermione had caught the Portrait door before it could swing shut and climbed out after him.

“Harry!” She cried, stumbling slightly over her untied shoe laces and simultaneously attempting to re-tie her mane of hair into its ponytail. “Wait!”

Harry turned around with obvious surprise, and she was treated to a clear view of what he was carrying. It was an ordinary black shoebox, taped all around the lid with copious amounts of spello-tape. From where they stood, she could spot that there were holes in the lid, as if someone had stabbed it repeatedly with a sharp pencil. As Hermione watched, the box rocked, as if something had slammed itself against one side of the box.

 “Hermione,” Harry said with obvious surprise. He must not have seen her in the common room. He looked down at the rattling box in his hands, back up at her, and then back down. “This…uh…this isn’t what it looks like?”

Hermione had absolutely no clue what she was looking at. But Harry’s reaction was enough for her to know that it was another of his clearly dastardly schemes.

“You, Harry Potter, are so weird,” She said, unable to stop herself. “Now. What the hell is going on and why is that box moving like there’s something inside it”

Harry winced, “You aren’t going to listen to me if I tell you it’s just a really big spider I caught, right?” He sighed at her continued look of disbelief. “No, I didn’t think that one would work on you, Hermione."

He often said things like that. Like he’d known her for years instead of a fortnight. Harry looked to the ceiling as if asking for answers from some cruel god. Then he let out a tremendous groan.

“This," He said, shaking the box lightly, “Is a tremendously dangerous agent of Lord Voldemort, who’s currently masquerading as Ron’s pet rat. I’ve been keeping him stunned while I figured out the best course of action, and now I’m going to take him to Dumbledore.”

They both remained silent for a long moment. Hermione in understandable shock and Harry in clear exhaustion.

Then he tacked on, “Don’t worry. I’ve been feeding him.”

“Professor,” Harry said with an unneeded amount of glee, “I have conquered an enemy of the light and now bring him to you! Behold.”

Dumbledore- who looked oddly even more impressive in his candy pink, cat patterned night clothes- looked a little bit like he thought he might still be having a dream. In fact, he’d had that same look on his face ever since Harry had knocked on his chamber door and demanded an ‘audience’ with him. He just stared at the shoebox, which Harry had flung on to the wizard’s coffee table, with befuddlement.

“He’s in the box.” Harry clarified, entirely unhelpfully.  

“Who’s in the box, my dear boy?" The wizard asked, his voice clearly denoting that he believed he was conversing with someone who was a few marbles short of a gobstone set. He looked over Harry’s head at Hermione, clearly wanting her to be the one who would explain what was going on. She stared back blankly at him. She didn’t have a clue either, despite Harry’s obviously insane explanation.

She’d sort of just tagged along to be Harry’s morale support when the headmaster calmly broke to the boy that he was obviously insane and would need to be taken to the nearest wizarding psychiatric facility as soon as possible.

“Peter Pettigrew.” Harry said calmly. Dumbledore’s eyebrows shot up so high she was sure for a moment they would merge with his hairline. He clearly recognised the name.

“Harry, Peter Pettigrew is dead.” He said, slowly, “He’s been dead for ten years.”

“Ah!” Harry said, wiggling his finger like he was Sherlock Holmes explaining the case to a befuddled John Watson. “That’s what he wanted you to think. In actual fact, Pettigrew was an unregistered animagus who, upon being chased by Sirius Black,” Dumbledore’s eyebrows once again became one with the sky at this name, “faked his own death, framed Sirius and took twelve muggles out in an explosion. And now he’s there, in that box, in his animagus form of a rat.”

Harry gave the box a demonstrative poke. It shook. Harry seemed rather self-satisfied with this speech. That was until Dumbledore seemed to stump him with one croaked question.

“How could you possibly know this?!”

Harry blinked “Ah."

In the pause that followed his words, Hermione was sure she counted one full orbital period of the planet Neptune.

Harry waved his hands wildly “Well,”

In the next silence black holes were formed and died. The longest living killer whale was born and died peacefully in his sleep, finally becoming one with the earth and the sea floor as he’d always dreamed he would as a baby killer whale.

Harry winced, “You see—”

Oak trees sprouted and were felled. Mammoths experienced a brief resurgence before once again going extinct. The human race finally figured out how to manipulate natural occurrences of biological immortality.

And then, after all that, Harry Potter finally sighed and said, “You see Professor. The truth is I’m obviously one of the greatest seers of all time."

Which was just—Hermione threw her hands into the air in frustration. Dumbledore blinked. He blinked again. Harry stared placidly back at him.    

It was so obviously a lie. It was so obviously a lie.

“Prove it." Hermione demanded, voice just a touch more petulant than she would have liked.

Harry looked at her, seemed to remember she was there, and winced. “Erm.” The greatest seer of all time said “It’s going to snow this Christmas.”

Hermione could just punch him. She just really could.

“Oh, is it,” She said through gritted teeth, “And will it also shower on Easter and be chilly on Halloween? Oh, however could you have predicted that.”

He looked at her for a moment, brow pursed in thought. “Your mum and dad are called Jean and Patrick. Your first pet was a gerbil called Mr Darcy who went behind the sofa and was never seen again. Your first act of accidental magic was to make your library card say you were allowed unlimited books on loan. The librarian thought you must be a brilliant forger and banned you from the grown-up books for three weeks.”

Hermione blinked. “I could have just told you all that,” She whispered, even though she knew she hadn’t.

Harry just shrugged, “Or I could be the greatest seer of all time.” Then he grinned, “Oh dear, if only we had someone who could tell us which one it was.”

Hermione’s lips curled up reluctantly at the corners. It did explain a lot of Harry’s strange behaviour, she had to admit. Like how he seemed to always know when Draco was about to insult Ron or the few times he’d called someone by name even though they’d obviously never met him before.

Or how he’d known her last name on the train.

She looked at the shoebox, which was still valiantly trying to rock its way over the side of the table. “Is that really a dark wizard masquerading as Ron’s pet rat?”

Harry sighed, looking at the box forlornly. “Yeah, it is. Life’s absolutely ridiculous isn’t it?”

“I think maybe your life is just extra ridiculous. Like everyone else in the world gets to have mundane lives because you took all the strange happenings with you at birth.” Hermione whispered, still in slight shock.

Harry laughed lightly, “Honestly that would explain a worrying amount of my life.”

They both seemed to remember the Headmaster at the same time and turned back to look at him. The old man was staring off into the distance looking baffled. For the first time since Hermione had met the ineffable magician, he actually seemed to appear fallible. As if something he believed in as strongly as gravity had been disproven.

Actually, Hermione wasn’t entirely sure wizards believed in gravity. They probably just believed Merlin had cast some exhaustive sticking spell on the world to stop everything floating off.

“You…believe you are a Seer.” He said, though Hermione didn’t think it was actually a question as he didn’t wait for Harry’s answer, “And that in that box is Peter Pettigrew, who’s the actual traitor and not Sirius. ”

Hermione only had a moment to consider what it was that these two men had seemingly betrayed before Dumbledore’s mood suddenly shifted. “Well," He exclaimed, a blazing twinkle in his eye, “There’s only one way to find out the truth.”

As the great wizard pointed his wand at the shoebox, Hermione could tell he was desperately hoping that Harry was simply crazy.

Hermione also had a sinking feeling that that wasn’t actually the case. However comforting it would be to her ego.

Two hours later, after the unsettling reveal of the Grown-Man-Trapped-In-A-Box who was possibly a murder suspect, a drawn-out discussion that Harry had looked bored throughout, and the arrival of a myriad of ministry officials, Hermione and Harry were finally off to bed.

Harry had a skip in his step. Hermione had noticed that the boy, despite his exuberance and joy in seemingly all mundane aspects of Hogwarts life, seemed often weighed down by something. It must have been the knowledge of the murderer he kept under his bed. Alleged murderer, anyway. Hermione and Harry had been assured by an embarrassed ministry official that there would be an extensive- and he’d emphasised by-the-book- trial and investigation.

That part of the night had been surprisingly quite educational. Hermione had begun to have doubts about the calibre of many Wizarding civil services ever since she had learned of the entire community’s existence.

 Before they could climb through the portrait hole, they both stopped and turned to each other.

“I—" Harry began.

“Who—” Hermione began.

They both stopped. “You go first.” Harry said, rubbing his forehead tiredly.

Hermione bit her lip, “Who’s Sirius Black? What do people think he did?”

Harry sighed, and looked at a spiderweb on the ceiling instead of her face the whole time he answered. “He was- is- he is my godfather. And he’s in prison- there’s a wizarding prison called Azkaban- for the betrayal and subsequent murder of my parents. And for supposedly being a death eater. That’s a follower of Voldemort.”

Hermione winced slightly at the name, but let it pass, “Oh.” She said softly. Despite her many skills, comforting other people wasn’t one of them. She liked cold, hard facts and often didn’t know what to do or how to react when those cold, hard facts revealed sad, uncomfortable truths.

Harry stared a moment longer at the spider slowly spinning its web, and Hermione watched too. Then he looked at her with a weak smile, “But it should be okay now. It should all work out. Now.”

Hermione gave him a smile and patted him awkwardly on the arm.

Harry smiled a little more brightly at her, “You wont mind if we keep the whole seer thing between us?”

“Of course." Hermione said, shrugging easily. She rather liked having a secret that was just between her and Harry.

Just before they went to go their separate ways to their dormitory’s, Harry stopped them again.

“You’re a really good friend, Hermione.” He said, and gave her a fleeting hug. He was gone and up the stairs before she could even think to hug him back.

That was the first time anyone ever referred at Hermione Granger as someone who might be good at having friends. She wasn’t a seer herself, but she had a hopeful feeling that it wouldn’t be the last.

Dear Professor Mr Lupin,

My name is Harry Potter, and I’ve been told by a good friend (Hagrid!) that you knew my parents. I’d like if we could write to each other so that I could learn more about them, and about you too. This is my owl Hedwig, she’s very nice but also bossy and if she bites you it probably means she wants you to write faster. Sorry about that.

I also wanted to write you about some difficult news. I’m sure Dumbledore has been in contact, but if he hasn’t then I thought you should know that your friend Sirius Black is an innocent man. I can’t really tell you more in this letter, but I’m sure the Prophet will be out with as much of the story as they can gather as soon as possible. Ask Dumbledore for the rest of it. I hope this is good news.

I would like it very much if you too wanted to have a relationship with me. I don’t really have any other adults in the wizarding world. Especially not who knew my parents.

Hope you are feeling well. Please write back.

Best wishes,

Harry James Potter

p.s. I’ve sent a fancy chocolate bar attached with this letter so hopefully that reaches you intact. My friends mum always sends him whole boxes of the stuff. I hear chocolate is good for making people feel better, if you needed it.

By the time mid-October rolled around the weather at Hogwarts had turned from mild and grey to miserable and ready to storm the Bastille. Hermione had woken up every morning that past week to the soothing sound of rain slamming against the girls dormitory window.

(Well. She'd actually been woken up last Friday by Parvati’s shrieks of anger because Lavender had left the window open the night before, and the rain had soaked through her quilt. They’d only had six weeks of being roommates and the three girls were still working on becoming a cohesive unit. Hermione was slightly worried that it would end in homicide before they reached that point.)

 Their group had therefore taken it upon themselves to spend breaks and frees in a dusty back corner of the library. This was opposed to huddling around Hermione’s charmed jam jar of blue flames outside. It had only taken a few weeks for their group to coalesce into its now constant state. At first, Neville and Parvati, as well as some of Draco’s childhood Slytherin friends, had dipped in and out before finding their places with others. In Neville’s case, Harry had introduced him to some Hufflepuffs- Ernie, Justin and Hannah- and by the weeks end they hardly saw him apart from the trio. Harry still made it a habit to seek him out at least once a week and Hermione would partner with the round-faced boy in lessons they shared with the Slytherins, where neither Draco nor Neville’s friends were present.

 But Hermione, Harry, Draco and Ron had formed an easy, if often jovially combative, quartet. Harry seemed to be already attuned to all of Hermione and Ron’s quirks and demeanours, and well versed in how to handle them. He often seem baffled by Draco’s very presence though, despite being the one who had initially introduced them all. Any time that the Ravenclaw boy would make a joke that made Harry laugh, or go an extended period without making a snide comment about Hermione’s heritage or Ron’s family, Harry seemed to have an internal crisis. Hermione had noticed that Harry tended to periodically find the closest rain-soaked window to stare dramatically and stoically out of and this always increased anytime he seemed befuddled by something. She attributed this to him being a boy, and therefore inept at handling his own emotions.

At least, that’s what she’d observed from being around these particular boys. Ron and Draco had spent their first week of acquaintance on a path to mutually assured destruction. In fact Hermione had found herself considering the intelligence of becoming close to either of them, when it was clear that they would never be able to remain cordial around each other. It was only ever going to end in disaster. Then came the chess match. Ah, that first tense chess match. Half of Gryffindor tower had gathered to watch the youngest Weasley just marginally triumph over the first Malfoy in a century not to be sorted into Slytherin at a game of Wizard’s chess. Hermione had truly believed that Draco would up and leave the Gryffindor tower never to be seen again. Instead, the boy had grinned a rare real grin and held out his hand for Ron to shake.

“Next time, eh Weasley?” He’d said, before asking Ron’s opinion on some famous Chess controversy or something else Hermione had no interest in.

Hermione was incredibly grateful that the two had found something to bond over, as she didn’t want to give either of them up. Ronald was leaps and bounds ahead of the other two in terms of emotional maturity, and frankly hilarious. Hermione knew she tended to become too serious and lose herself in studying. Ron always found a way to give her grateful distractions or to bring levity to stressful situations she couldn’t seem to solve. He may not be the most academically focused person she’d ever met, and he definitely did not have enough respect for the sacred hall that was the Library, but he was the only other person who knew how to deal with Harry Potter and honestly that said a lot about him. Harry was stressful at the best of times.

 Anyway, she had Draco be obsessively academic with. Draco would often invite her to the spirited intellectual- and stringently structured- debates that would take place in Ravenclaw common room. Hermione had begun to understand why despite her aptitude for academia she hadn’t been sorted into Ravenclaw. They all valued knowledge and learning, sure, but most Ravenclaws she’d held conversations with had leaned just a little bit too far into the mad-scientist arena for her taste. Plus, there was always a strange air of anarchy and dissent in the blue and bronze common room. Hermione attributed it to the lingering intellectual influence of The Enlightenment. Viva la Ravenclaw.

 The pair would also often find themselves in spiralling conversations about tiny minutiae that had Ron and Harry groaning and calling order to the table. No accounting for taste with those too, honestly.

Harry had explained to Hermione privately that she shouldn’t get too close to Draco because his family were what was known as blood purists and he couldn’t be trusted not to discriminate against her for being a muggleborn. It was true that at first Draco had seemed vaguely suspicious of her, and obviously alarmed that he’d carried out a lengthy debate on magic with someone with muggle parents. But as the weeks went by, nothing had happened and the two had only grown closer. Whenever Draco made an uninformed or distasteful comment about muggles one of the other three would just correct him. Ron’s attempts often lead to hilariously inaccurate explanations, but the thought was there.

All in all, Hermione had never expected to already have such a solid friendship group. She often alarmed herself at random moments with the thought that she always, always had someone to sit with at dinner. That she always had someone to partner with. Someone to spend her free time with.

It baffled her constantly that there were actually people in the world who willingly wanted to do all those things with her.

Despite the ease of their social lives, Hermione still found herself dealing daily with The Harry Potter Problem. It deserved the capitalisation. It deserved several case files, an alphabetised filling cabinet full of information and copious amounts of colour coordinated spider diagrams.

Hermione had her trusty little blue notebook. It was almost full. She was going to have to owl her dad to send her a new one.

It was filled with lists such as ‘reasons why Harry Potter is probably not a dangerous individual’ and ‘why I should still be friends with Harry Potter (despite everything)’ and ‘Possible reasons Harry potter is Like That’.

They were extensive lists.

Harry had continued his crusade against Quirrell and his odd behaviour around Snape. So far he had missed approx. 20% of their potions lessons. Plus, Quirrell’s turban always ended their lessons slightly worse for wear after Harry’s escapades. She was seriously going to have to have a conversation with him about sensitivity training.

 He went to Dumbledore’s office at least once a day to ask for updates on Sirius Black as information on his release hadn’t yet reached the media and Harry was beginning to worry. The Headmaster had taken to leaving the great hall very quickly after mealtimes so as to avoid the determined boy-who-lived. All that Dumbledore could tell Harry apparently was that the ministry had it under serious review. Harry didn’t seem to think this was enough.

They’d filled Draco and Ron in on the situation, but Hermione had noted that Harry hadn’t told them about his seeing powers. Despite Harry’s pretty convincing observations about her own life, she wasn’t one hundred percent convinced about it herself. The problem was that she couldn’t think of a solution that made any more sense.

Ron had been pretty upset about his rat though. Harry had promised that that summer they could go to the pet shop at Diagon alley and see if they could get something else, but Ron had only mumbled something about money which had led harry to blush profusely and be extra nice to Ron for days after.

 The next occurrence in the Great Saga of Harry Potter came after potions on the Friday before Halloween. Harry was usually the first one out of the doors of the potion’s dungeon when the bell for the end of the period went. They’d had it first today, so everyone else had taken their time packing up and talking to their friends before walking to wherever it was they would usually spend their breaktimes. Hermione had expected to pack up her equipment before walking out into the hallway with Ron and Draco to find an uncomfortable Harry waiting for them, as always. This day went differently.

 Harry lingered. The other two occupants of the table and Hermione herself stared at him in shock. Harry never spent any more time in a room with Snape than he needed to.

 The Professor himself seemed to take account of this odd situation “Not in the running away mood today, Potter? You know It doesn’t count as catching up on your missed time if you dawdle about.” he sneered.

 Harry visibly gulped “Actually,” He said, voice choked before he cleared it and went to go on. Hermione and Ron exchanged bewildered looks. “I wondered if I could ask you a question.”

 “You just did, didn’t you?” Snape mocked. “But fine. Ask your question, Potter. Please attempt not to sound as inane as you always do.”

Hermione thought this was a bit rich coming from a teacher that hardly ever heard Harry talk, but the professor seemed to hold a grudge against Harry. Hermione tried to catch Harry’s eye to check if he was alright. Not, as she suspected was the case, possessed.

 “Um. Do you have any information about the cost and distributor information for Wolfsbane potion?” Harry asked, the whole question coming out in a garbled rush. Both Snape and Hermione blinked at Harry slowly in disbelief. If Hermione had had any predictions at all for where this was going, she certainly wouldn’t have said here. She made a mental note to add this to her ‘Harry potter is so strange’ list.  

 “I wasn’t aware you were a Werewolf Mister Potter.” Snape said in disbelief.

“No, it’s for…research.” Harry said lamely.

Snape’s eyes crew closer together in suspicion. “What research would require an eleven-year-old boy to inquire in to the cost and distribution of a rare, advanced, specialised potion like Wolfsbane?”

Harry blinked, shifting about nervously. In fact, Hermione was pretty sure he hadn’t stood still at all through out this exchange. Just continually twitched oddly.

“Advanced…research?”

Snape seemed to suddenly conclude that it would probably save him both time and sanity to just give in to the odd force that was Harry. Hermione saw this as the best course of action for self-preservation. He rifled quickly through his first, then second, desk drawers. When he found what he was looking for, he flourished it at Harry. It was a dull grey pamphlet, not embellished in any way, and Snape was holding it out loosely with as little of his hand touching as if he thought Harry’s general madness might infect him.

“Take this.” He sneered, “And get out of my classroom.”

They fled.

When Hermione, Ron and Draco pressed him further for information he simply pressed the flimsy excuse that it was for ‘research’.

Hermione turned to the final pages of her notebook and began the list ‘Harry potter; Werewolf???’.

Dear Moony,

No one should have to face the moon alone.

Please use this money to keep yourself safe. Trusted distributor highlighted in the leaflet.

Best wishes,

A Friend

When Hermione had finally gotten around to writing her dad for a new notebook, she’d erred on the safe side and asked if he could send her multiple. The package arrived promptly with three A-4 ruled note-books and a packet of ball-point pens. She loved her dad.

Harry and Draco both eyed the package with interest. Draco because he’d never actually seen a pen before and Harry because he suspected everyone of nefarious behaviour despite being the most suspicious person to ever exist.

“What’s all that for?” He asked, tomato ketchup from his bacon butty landing sloppily on his chin.

“Research.” Hermione said sarcastically, causing Harry to blush lightly. He still wouldn’t explain the wolfsbane thing to her. All she’d gotten out of him was that it was another ‘seer’ thing. She’d ruled out him being a werewolf however when the full moon had come and gone without any suspicious behaviour. In fact, she could account for his whereabouts all night; He’d fallen asleep on the sofa in the common room, drooling.

 Harry continued to look at the notebooks. After a few minutes, in which he finally managed to notice the ketchup and wipe it off and Ron actually managed to spill what seemed like half a bottle of the stuff down his white shirt, he cautiously spoke. “Would it be okay if I had one of those? Obviously, I’d pay you back ‘Mione.” He hurriedly added. “It’s okay to say no.”

Hermione considered this for a moment. She sort of wanted to tell him no seen as it was indirectly his fault that she’d used up her first one so fast. Eventually she shrugged and passed him the green one and a biro. “Here, Harry. Consider it an early Christmas present.” She frowned. “Just don’t plan a murder in it.” She frowned harder. “Just don’t implicate me when you plan a murder in it.”

Harry rolled his eyes good naturedly while Draco and Ron just laughed.

A few days later, Hermione came across the notebook lying face down on the common room table. She picked it up, curious, but only caught a glimpse of the page before Harry returned from the bathroom and nervously snatched it back.

 It was a to-do list. She caught the phrase ‘reveal Quirrell’ and a word that began with ‘horc-‘. The name ‘Cedric’ was circled extensively in one corner of the page.

None of it enlightened her any further on Harry. Honestly, it just confused her more. Though she was pretty sure he just must have a crush on that third year Cedric Diggory.

Who could blame him?

Halloween finally came and with it a black cloud hanging over Harry’s head. If Hermione had thought a normal Harry was impossible to deal with, she’d obviously just jinxed herself.

She started to feel a lot more sympathetic towards him, however, when Draco quietly told her that Halloween was the day Harry’s parents had died.

She expected that Harry would want to spend the day somewhere private and not at the feast, and so wasn’t too surprised when he begged off. She wasn’t even that surprised when he asked her and Ron to stay back and keep him company. Ron had agreed slightly wistfully (He’d joyfully waxed poetic on the food he’d been told got served at the feast for an hour at lunch time the day before) but ready and happy to help out their friend. Draco would have been forced to sit with his friends at Ravenclaw table anyway during the feast, so it wasn’t like they were leaving him stranded and alone.

Hermione was surprised, however, when ten minutes after everyone else had left for the feast Harry suddenly sprung up from his seat (scattering the playing cards they’d been using all over the rug) and declared they were going on an adventure.

“Harry, you aren’t Peter Pan. Pick up the cards and sit down.” Hermione said as she tried to fish a lost ace out from under her armchair.

“Who in the morgana is Peter Pan?” Ron said, nose scrunched.

Harry pouted, hands on his hips in either an ironic facsimile of the aforementioned Lost boy or in a very good impression of a petulant five-year old. “Seriously. Ron, Hermione. I need your help in something.”

 Hermione frowned, abandoning her pursuit of the escapee playing card. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“If you need help shouldn’t we wait for Draco to be here too?” Ron said in confusion.

Harry shook his head frantically. Hermione guessed that this was his weird distrust of Draco coming into play. “No. No we should do this while everyone’s at the feast.”

“Do what?” Hermione demanded.

Harry bit his lip, running a hand through his already messy hair. “I need help finding a lost thing.”

Hermione stared at him. How could someone so frustratingly enigmatic come in the shape of a short eleven-year-old boy with messy hair and patched jeans? His glasses were even crooked for God’s sake.

“What have you lost?” Ron said in confusion.

Harry shook his head. “I didn’t lose it. It’s been lost for ages.”

“Just tell us what it is.” Hermione huffed.

Harry paused for a moment, as if trying to decide how much he should say. Then, because he was a dramatic bastard, he let out a deep breathe and said, “The lost Diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw.”

Hermione wasn’t entirely sure what this was. She couldn’t learn everything about magical history in two months. But Ron let out a whistle.

“Mate. Draco is going to kill you when he finds out you left him out of this.”

Which was how they found themselves following an agitated Harry to the other side of the Seventh-floor. Hermione asked increasingly bewildered questions the whole time.

“But Harry,” She said for what felt like the millionth time, “How do you know where it’s going to be?”

Harry looked back at her with a cheeky grin and tapped his nose. “Ixnay on the uestion-qay, Hermione.”

She hated him. She did. But also, there was a very large part of her that didn’t. And a not-small-enough part of her that was rather enjoying the thrilling butterflies she was getting already. She couldn’t shake the possibility that they might actually find a lost magical artefact. After all, unexplainable things happened around Harry Potter all the time.

 When they reached a stretch of corridor that didn’t seem any more notable apart from the pretty cool tapestry of dancing trolls, Harry called them to a halt. “Here.”

“Here?!” Ron exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air. “Harry you’ve gone absolutely barmy, you have.”

Harry laughed like Ron had made a purposeful joke and then waved his hands in a shushing motion. “Give me a sec and you’ll see, alright?”

Then he began to pace the corridor, eyes closed in concentration. Ron stared at her in disbelief and mouthed ‘barmy’ with twisting his finger in the air near his ear. Hermione was inclined to agree.

 When Harry had paced three times he stopped and turned to the wall opposite the tapestry triumphantly. Ron and Hermione turned too and-

And there was a door.

“Oh my god.” Said Hermione, who even after two months of living in a magical castle was still amazed by it daily.

“For Merlin’s sake.” Said Ron, who didn’t like when there was credibility to Harry’s madness. It just encouraged him even more all the other times he was actually wrong.

 Harry whooped. “This, my good friends, is the Room of Requirement. It’ll become anything you need.”

“Anything?” Hermione said dubiously.

“Yep.” Harry said, popping the p and being altogether far to happy with himself. “Like if you really needed the bathroom it would become a toilet. Or a place to hide from Filch.”

“Or a missing magical artefact directory, apparently.” Ron said drily.

Harry grinned, moving forward and pushing down the handle on the door. They followed behind, Hermione still not entirely sure she believed Harry.

What was before them wasn’t impressive in the wondrous way that suddenly appearing magical doors were, but in the way that landfills were sometimes impressive due to their very size. There were stacks and stacks of- stuff. Every type of -stuff- that you could ever imagine. Furniture and books and clothing. Reams of paper and stacks of tea cups and ornate gilded mirrors. Feather boas and stuffed parrots and even a discarded diamond chandelier.

“This is the room of hidden things.” Harry said quietly, suddenly sombre for some reason.

Ron was looking at him oddly now. “Seriously Harry, how is it that you know all this weird stuff?”

Harry shrugged awkwardly “Read it in a book.”

Hermione let out a quiet squawk. She let it go. Then, “Harry. How are we meant to find Ravenclaw’s tiara in all of this stuff?”

“That’s why I needed you two." Harry said, embarrassed. “We’re going to have to split up. Here.” He pulled out two pieces of torn-out notebook paper from his pocket and held them out. Hermione took one and unfolded it. It was an average-talent sketch of a pretty tiara. “That’s what we’re looking for.” He said, now looking nervous as if they might suddenly decide that being friends with him was obviously too much hassle and give up and leave. “This is really important. I—I just really need your help.”

Hermione and Ron shared a look, and then nodded. Split up and look for clues it was then. It was a good thing she’d always held Velma as a sort of personal hero.

 Two weeks after the Halloween Fiasco (which rest assured Hermione had made many, many lists about. Harry had mysteriously absconded with the diadem after they’d found it and he’d taken them for a celebratory meal in the kitchens. Ron had been happy. Hermione had been suspicious.) Hermione wandered into the second-floor girls’ bathroom to find Harry chatting happily to moaning myrtle, leaning against one of the ornate bathroom sinks.

She turned around immediately and left before Harry Potter could drive her clinically insane at the tender age of twelve.

Three days before Christmas break (wherein Harry and Ron would be staying at her house due to Harry’s suggestion. Draco had been invited but had been forced to decline for obvious reasons) her DADA teacher was proven to be a death eater.

God, she hated it when Harry was right.

It went like this:

“Hey! Professor McGonagall!” Harry had yelled from one end of the Transfiguration classroom. McGonagall had exasperatedly turned around and watched as Harry gleefully clasped the hand of a calmly passing by Professor Quirrell. Professor Quirrell Screamed in agony and fell to his knees clutching his hand. Suffice to say the hallway was cleared very quickly and both Harry and Quirrell were dragged to Dumbledore’s office.

In fifth lesson that same day a slightly singed Professor McGonagall had stormed into DADA just as everyone was considering calling time of death on that lesson. A very singed Harry Potter had trailed behind her. McGonagall had irately and succinctly explained to the class that Professor Quirrell wouldn’t be teaching here any more because actually it turned out he was slightly too evil to be working with children and also no, Mr. Finnegan Defence against the Dark Arts was not cancelled for the rest of the year.

Then she had waltzed rather magnificently out of the room. Harry had murmured an abridged version of the events that transpired in Dumbledore’s office when he came to sit by them. Quirrell had apparently tried unsuccessfully to insist that there was nothing weird about spontaneously burning when a student touched your skin to an unconvinced McGonagall and Dumbledore. While Quirrell had been focused on them, Harry had finally succeeded at whipping Quirrell’s turban off his head to reveal You-know-who’s face merged with the back of the professor’s head. After an intense scuffle that had left half of Dumbledore’s office on fire, the three non-evil occupants of the room had been left with an unconscious Quirrell and absolutely no clue at all where You-know-who had gone. Harry told them that he could have sworn he saw some sort of magical cloud flow into and through the flames, but honestly Hermione thought that sounded fanciful. The whole thing sounded fanciful. And creepy.

  A bashful Harry at grinned at Hermione (who was banging her head against the desk), Ron (who was gaping like a fish) and Draco (who was quite possibly crying into his hands. Out of frustration or amusement it shall never be known).

That was how they finished out their first term at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Ron was finishing off the last piece of shortbread (his fifth in the last hour) (“Hermione! Who knew muggles could cook so well without magic?”) when Harry suddenly shot up from dawdling on Hermione’s plush bedroom floor with is Plan Face on. No good ever came of Harry’s Plan Face.

 They’d had three rather marvellous days under Granger hospitality so far. Hermione’s mum and dad had been exceptionally pleased that Hermione had already made such strong friends, though of course a little baffled that they were all boys. The Granger’s professions certainly supplemented a big enough house so that Harry and Ron could sleep in the spare room, which calmed Patrick Granger’s nerves about the whole situation.

They’d been ice-skating at a local lake which always froze over (though this claim, which was plastered across the lakes picturesque advertisements, always prompted a rant about the coming effects of global warming from Hermione) and had made cookies and had watched every Christmas film under the sun. They had also consumed far, far too much hot chocolate. Christmas was the only time of year that the Grangers let refined sugar into their household.

 They’d simply been taking a couple hours to relax with her dads trusty Christmas songs mixtape on in the back ground. Hermione was reading, Ron was eating and Harry, apparently, was planning.

“No.” Hermione said before Harry could get any words out. She calmly turned the page of her novel. A Christmas Carol, which she re-read every year even though she wasn’t the biggest Dickens fan.

 ‘You may be an undigested bit of beef-,‘ Scrooge was moaning as Harry began to pout. Hermione sighed. She was honestly far too much of a pushover.

“Sorry, Harry. What are you planning now?” She said, resigned. Ron snorted from the other side of the room.

 Harry pouted harder. “Who says I’m planning?”

“Harry.” Ron teased. “Last term alone you got a teacher fired, found a man who everyone had assumed dead for a decade and discovered the Lost Diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw. Which, by the way, you still haven’t told us what you did with. You’re always planning.”

 Harry had the look on his face of a man who desperately wanted to dispute something he knew was true.

 “All I was going to say was that we should go into London.”

“London?” Hermione said, looking up in actual interest, “What ever for?”

“Well. I thought we could go to the national history museum.”

Hermione tried very hard to hold back a squeal of excitement. Hermione failed. Ron’s hands flew to his ears to protect his hearing from decibels only known to dogs.

“A museum!” Hermione crowed. “Oh, Harry. I’ve never liked you more.”

Maybe she could start to like Harry’s Plan Face.

Never trust Harry Potter’s Plan Face.

 She’s honestly thought they were having a perfectly normal day. The Granger’s and their guests had caught the train into the city early that morning. They’d had a lovely breakfast, a quick tour of the usual tourist traps, a lovely lunch, and then on to the main event. Hermione’s current raison d’etre. The Natural History Museum in all its glory.

Two hours later, Hermione had been shaken out of her educational stupor by a tugging n her sleeve. She looked over at Harry in confusion. She hadn’t even finished what she was reading about fossils.

“What?” She huffed quietly, because Hermione Granger thought that this museum deserved the same reverence as her sacred library.

 Harry didn’t say anything, just jerked his head at where Ron was sitting fascinated by a pamphlet about Dinosaurs on the other side of the room. He tugged her hand until she deigned to follow him over.

“Harry. What?” She hissed.

“Just come on, Hermione. I’ll explain in a minute.” He said. She’d assumed he’d stop when they reached Ron, but instead he just grabbed a confused Ron’s elbow and started tugging at him too. He led the both, protesting of course, into the next exhibit before finally stopping and spinning around to face them.

“Are you certifiably insane Harry Potter?” Hermione said. She perhaps got too heated over museums. It was a trigger spot for her.

Harry just snorted. “Sorry, Hermione. But we need to give your parents the slip.” She let out a garbled noise and he hurried on. “They’ve been taking as long as you at every display, so I’d say we’ve got a good hour and a half before they notice we’ve actually gone. Even then they’ll probably just think you’ve gotten stuck reading about palaeontology somewhere.”

“Go. Where.” She said through gritted teeth.

Harry bit his lip. “Okay. This explanation is going to have to be quick.” He ran his hand through his hair roughly, leaving it looking a little bit like he’d been electrocuted. “There are objects of importance. Six of them. And I need to get them or something bad will happen in the future.” He glanced at Ron and winced. “Erm. I’m guessing. Anyway. The diadem is one, but there’s another one in an abandoned house about 20 minutes from here. If we dash and get it, then come back, that’ll be two I’ve got.”

Hermione and Ron stared at him. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe him. She did believe him. But she could also tell when she was being condescended too and when someone was omitting parts of the truth.

And also just a little part of her didn’t believe him.

“If we go do this for you, you’re going to owe us so much.” Ron said, sighing and shaking his head.

“I can’t believe you used a museum to lure me into another one of your plots.” Hermione groaned, tugging at the box braids that her aunty had put in for her the other day to help stop her hair from frizzing in potions.

Harry looked honestly upset with himself. “Look, I know. I’m being a really bad friend. It’s just—I haven’t got anyone else.”

It was the look on Harry’s face that finally convinced her. He looked positively crushed. She looked into his eyes and saw a boy who was truly doing the best he could, even if his best sometimes fell short.

“Fine,” she relented, “But if we get caught I’m telling my parents you’re a bad influence on me.”

A short trip on the underground and a walk later (during which Hermione clutched her tote bag very tightly and kept close to an equally overwhelmed Ron) they found themselves standing in front of a crescent shaped cul-de-sac of posh three-story town houses. They were the types of houses that Russian oligarchs bought and never lived in but that no one else could ever actually afford.

“Why is there a number 13 but not a number 12?” Hermione wondered in confusion. She’d seen streets that missed out on numbering a house 13, but not 12. What was wrong with the number 12?

Harry gave a short laugh. Hermione looked past Ron to see him. He was staring rather pitifully at the house. His eyes were glistening a little. “You’re right, Hermione. It is stupid. Welcome to Number 12 Grimmauld Place.”

When Hermione looked back, there was suddenly a whole new townhouse squeezing itself between numbers 11 and 13. It had a shade darker bricks then the rest of the row and when the door appeared it was a deep black compared to the other houses London-red front doors. The windows were obviously grimy even from here.

“Wow.” Ron said in appreciation. “That is cool."

“Who lives here?” Hermione asked Harry softly.

“My godfather.” Harry said distractedly, and before either of them could parse this he was striding towards the door. “Come on.”

He was- is- he is my godfather. That’s what Harry had said of Sirius Black. She wondered if it was a good idea to enter a convicted murderers house without permission. Even if the conviction was more likely than not wrongful. She just sighed and followed Harry anyway. This was becoming a bad habit.

 The door was unlocked when Harry went to open it. She supposed you didn’t much have to worry about crime when your house was literally invisible to anyone who didn’t know it was there.

 The opened door revealed a long, dusty corridor. The décor seemed to have been chosen to specifically scream ‘beware ye who enter here’ and it managed to make even the long, high ceilinged Georgian corridor feel cramped. The layer of dust was so thick that the first step Harry took sent a cloud into the air.

“Kreacher!” Harry called softly into the emptiness, voice tinged with tense worry.

Hermione was about to ask why Harry had taken to shouting random words into empty houses when a small, wrinkled creature with ginormous flapping ears wearing a teacloth appeared in the hallway out of thin air. It hurt her dignity a bit when she let out a strangled screech.

 Harry let out a small breath but didn’t relax. “Did you just hear me call you? Or is elf magic as cool as the books said it was?” Harry said with a false lightness.

 The thing let out a frog like croak, like it hadn’t spoken in years, before addressing Harry, “Kreacher is serving you, Master. Though he is not knowing you at all.”

“What is he?” Hermione said, incapable of keeping quiet. Kreacher’s head whipped towards her, fury filling his face and he began to open his mouth but—

“Kreacher I order you not to wake up Mrs. Black’s Portrait.” Harry hissed, and then, “And don’t insult Hermione.” He added, pointing at Hermione to indicate her.

Kreacher was obviously sulking now and he let out a low despondent moan. “But master is bringing mu—”

“Kreacher I order you not to say that word.” Harry snapped, real anger colouring his voice now. He took a deep breath. “And now,” He paused, like he was scared, “I need you to bring me Regulus’ locket.”

Kreacher let out a second of what was sure to have been an almighty screech, before slamming his hands over his mouth. The whole room waited in silence for a few seconds. Harry and Kreacher were listening out for something and when it didn’t come, they both relaxed.

“You don’t have to punish yourself Kreacher.” Harry muttered, rubbing his hand over his brow and looking far older than his eleven years. “But I do need the locket.”

The pitiful creature seemed torn, both physically and mentally. “Master Regulus is ordering me to destroys it.” he croaked.

Harry nodded. “You’ve done really well, Kreacher. But I’m going to destroy it. I need you to give it to me so that I can do what Regulus wanted.”

This seemed to mollify Kreacher slightly, “Master promises?”

Harry nodded. “I promise you, Kreacher.”

The elf vanished with out a crack but Hermione hardly had the chance to open her mouth and ask a question before he was bag, holding what looked like a parcel of old, crushed black velvet.

He held it out to Harry preciously. “Regulus be giving his life for his locket.” He said mournfully. Hermione desperately wanted to know who this Regulus was.

Harry nodded gravely and took the parcel from him. “Thank you, Kreacher. Regulus would be very proud of you.”

The creature preened slightly. It was a very strange thing to witness.

With a last sorrowful look around the hallway and up the stairs, Harry turned on his heels and walked through Hermione and Ron and back out the door.

 Hermione and Ron exchanged another worried look before following quickly after him. Ron threw a harried “bye,” over his shoulder at Kreacher.

 “Seriously. What was that?” Hermione hissed to Ron on the front steps. Harry had walked over to the small green in the centre of the crescent and had sat down on the ground heavily. They followed after him.

“Have a little tact ‘Mione.” Ron said, snorting lightly. “That was a house elf. They’re like—for cleaning houses and doing wizards’ bidding and stuff. Only really rich or really old families have them.”

They both plonked them selves down on either side of Harry.

“Well sorry I wasn’t born magical, Ronald.” Hermione snapped. “Some of us don’t know what’s happening at all times.” She said pointedly at harry.

Ron snorted again “Nah. Even Harry is mostly clueless.”

“Especially Harry.” Harry said, groaning and putting his head in his hands.

“What’s all this about, mate.” Ron asked quietly. “Aren’t we a bit young to be doing stuff like this without, I dunno, a supervising adult?”

Harry rubbed a hand over his face harshly. “That’s what I’ve been thinking the whole time.” He muttered.

They were silent for a few minutes before Harry despairingly said, “If I promise that one day soon I’ll explain everything, will you guys just let this one go?”

Hermione and Ron met eyes over Harry’s head. Sometimes it seemed like all they did was look at each other in confusion or frustration over Harry’s behaviour. Now they both shared matching looks of concern.

“Alright, mate.” Ron said first. “But let’s keep all the crazy to a minimum next term alright?”

Harry snorted, knocking his shoulder into Ron’s jovially “You’re the best, mate.”

Hermione gave Harry a tight smile when he grinned at her with megawatts. He didn’t seem to notice that she wasn’t returning it equally as brightly.

Neither of them seemed to notice that she hadn’t actually agreed to the deal any more. Just because she wasn’t planning on bugging Harry about it didn’t mean she was going to let it go.

Hermione was more withdrawn around Harry in the last week of the Christmas holidays. Sure, they were spending time together constantly; Watching films, going on walks, talking mindlessly about anything and everything for hours on end. But Hermione was always cautious now.

Harry’s strangeness had been sort of amusing in the beginning. Now she was just a little bit worried that it was going to end up putting all of their friends in danger.

The problem she had was that she couldn’t just simply stop being friends with Harry or start disliking him for what he might cause. Harry was her best friend. Someone who seemed to fully accept her, warts and all, for the first time in her life. They’d only known each other for three months but she already knew that losing Harry Potter as a friend would make her life just a little bit worse all round.

She needed to find out what he was hiding. Then she needed to make him one hundred percent better at whatever it was before it got him seriously injured. Or worse. Expelled.

Harry had hidden the velvet package in the back of the rarely-used garden shed, under the plant pots. Hermione had taken a secret trip out there one night to look at it, but she’d gotten such a terrible feeling just being in the presence of the package that she hadn’t worked up the courage to pick it up and look inside it. Harry hadn’t yet revealed anything as he’d said he would, and Ron had seemed to push the incident from his mind almost entirely.

Hermione had almost entirely filled up her second spare notebook at this point so it was lucky that her dad had gotten her more for Christmas. She’d tried to get another look at Harry’s own notebook, but he’d become much better at keeping a close eye on it ever since he’d found Hermione holding it. It was probably just full of Harry waxing poetical about Cedric Diggory’s eyes. Hermione was going to be a good friend about that and not push it until Harry wanted to talk to her about it himself.

She couldn’t say the same about the rest of Harry’s secrets.

On the last day of the holiday, the groups frantic packing (frantic on the parts of Harry and Ron and astutely organised on the behalf of Hermione) was interrupted by the doorbell. They only vaguely looked up at the sound, Ron still fascinated by anything electrical that happened in the Granger household.

“Harry,” Mrs. Granger called up the stairs, sounding confused. “Ron, Hermione. Come downstairs a minute.”

The group exchanged intrigued glances, before filling out of Hermione’s bedroom door and onto the landing. Harry, who’d left first, froze stock still at the top of the stairs causing Ron to slam into his back. Hermione peered over his shoulder

Behind her mother in the hallway were two men, obviously wizards even in their muggle dress. One was tall, sandy haired and worn looking. He smiled kindly up at the three of him. The man in front of him was thin, with chopped black scraggly hair to his chin and an attire consisting of all black. He was looking at Harry like he was the son.

“Harry,” The man said, his voice hoarse as if from disuse, “I’m—”

But he was cut of by Harry’s cry of joy as he flung himself down the stairs and wrapped his arms around the man tightly. He was so thin that Harrys short arms only just missed meeting around the back.

“Oof.” The man said, staring down at the boy in surprise. “I’m... Sirius.” he said, though it came out a little questioning.

Harry stepped back, embarrassed but seemingly unwilling to go to far from the man. As Hermione and Ron had descended the stairs to join the group in the hallway, Hermione could see the glistening tears beginning to form in Harry’s eyes. The two men also looked slightly damp around the eyes.

“Sorry.” Harry said. “Erm. It’s just I’ve seen pictures,” He shrugged awkwardly, “I know who you are.”

“You found Peter,” Sirius said, staring down at the boy in wonderment. Hermione’s mother was still watching the scene with slight confusion.

Harry shrugged, running a hand roughly through his hair. The two men’s eyes alighted upon the gesture.

“It was nothing.” Harry said awkwardly “How long have you been back? I’m sorry it took so long.”

Sirius let out a weak laugh, “Don’t worry kid. I used to work for the ministry. I know how bad they are at paperwork.”

“He’s been back for a few days.” The man behind Sirius said. He held out his hand to Hermione’s mother and smiled at the kids, “I’m Remus Lupin, by the way. We were very good friends of Harry’s parents.”

“You’re my godfathers.” Harry said, a note of stubbornness in his voice.

Remus seemed slightly surprised by this statement. “Well. Only Sirius, legally.”

“But it would have been the both of us if you’re parents had had their way.” Sirius said, giving Remus a weighted glance.

“We’ve been unable to see Harry for a long time…due to unforeseen circumstances.” Remus explained to her interested mother, “But Harry and I have been in contact these past few months and Sirius’…circumstances… just recently changed for the better.”

Ron and Hermione shot each other amused glances over Remus’ euphemisms.

Sirius bent down onto his knees so that he was Harry’s height “Harry,” He said nervously, “I know you live with your aunt, but..” He bit his lip, “We’d like you to come stay with us over the summer.”

“And then permanently after that if you like it.” Remus said, equally nervous.

“Oh, how lovely,” Hermione’s mum exclaimed.

Ron grinned, gripping Hermione’s hand out of excitement. Hermione knew that Harry had told Ron some about his fraught home life.

Hermione just kept watching Harry’s face. A blooming joy began to dawn across his face. The sun coming out, finally, after months of rain.

That was the first time Hermione ever saw Harry cry. She hoped that every time afterwards would be for equally happy occasions.

Sirius and Remus remained in contact with Harry via a constant stream of letters all through the next term. Hermione’s mother also informed her that she’d struck up a friendship with the couple who had been invited to the Granger’s most recent potluck. Hermione wasn’t sure how her mother would feel if she knew that Sirius was an ex-convict, but she supposed that what her mother knew wouldn’t hurt her.

Sirius had been released by the ministry under conditions, Harry told them. He had to report to his probation officer weekly and couldn’t leave the country. A lock had been placed on his wand so that he would only be able to use minor spells. He wouldn’t be completely exonerated of his crimes and allowed to live a free life until Peter had been given a trial and officially convicted of the crime. Harry informed her that Dumbledore had fought for this situation, as the ministry had wanted to keep Sirius in prison until the trial was over, even though that could take months. It was the only time Hermione had seen Harry look anything but wary towards the headmaster.

 Term began after Christmas without much fanfare. Draco regaled them happily with many re-enactments of is stuffy pureblood Christmas. They were promptly asked to leave the library for laughing too loudly. It was a sad day in Hermione’s life.

Their new DADA teacher was Professor Vance. Harry treated her with suspicion at first as was par for the course.

Harry would put his hand up to ask her questions such as “What’s a death eater’s favourite colour?” and, “are you or are you not a secret death eater in disguise?”

Professor Vance, who was a tall and rather intimidating woman, began to simply ignore Harry’s raised hands until he reluctantly put them down. It wasn’t until a few weeks before valentines that Harry relented and began to warm to the Professor.  

“You know, Harry, I knew your mother rather well,” Vance said in her thick Irish accent. She’d been making her rounds about the classroom assessing everybody’s progress on the task. She’d paused at their table to correct Neville’s wand movements before his Petrificus Totalus accidentally took someone’s eyes out.

Harry looked up at the woman with badly hidden curiosity, “And was that before or after you were an agent of You-Know-Who?” He snarked, but it was weak at best.

Surprisingly Vance just laughed, “She was a few years younger than me, actually. I tutored her in Defence. She claimed it was her weakest class, but she still got easy E’s so I’m not so sure.” Vance gave Harry a kind look, “She was a brilliant witch. You must have gotten that from her. Your dad was brilliant too, I’m sure, but he was no Lily Evans. Her death was a loss to the whole world, but most especially to you, kid.”

Professor Vance called them all kid, but there was a special inflection in the way she said it to Harry. Hermione had often thought that when the professor looked at Harry, it seemed that she was seeing someone else. She wondered if Vance had called Harry’s mother kid.

Harry looked conflicted for a few moments, but finally his expression relaxed. “Thank you, Professor. I wish I’d known her.”

“Well,” Vance said, whipping her long black braid over her shoulder and beginning to walk towards Pansy Parkinson who was hitting her wand in frustration against the desk, “I’m always here if you want to hear a story about her.”

Hermione stopped having to listen to all of Harry’s long speculative rants about how evil Vance was sure to be after that. When Harry raised his hands in lessons for the rest of the year it was only ever to ask a genuine question.

Hermione had thought it was pretty weird that Harry had followed her into the second-floor girls’ bathroom after potions that day, but she’d just chalked it up to general Harry weirdness. He probably just wanted to catch up on all the school gossip with Myrtle.

Hermione had started her period in January and preferred to come to Myrtle’s bathroom for privacy during those days. Myrtle was usually pretty happy to join in on all of Hermione’s PMS fuelled angry rants while Hermione washed her hands. It was pretty good stress relief.

While in the cubicle Hermione could swear she heard the sound of stone scraping against stone. She really hoped to harry wasn’t destroying school property while she was present.

When she went to wash her hands Harry was hurriedly shutting his bag and standing awkwardly in front of the sinks.

Hermione paused and stared at him suspiciously, “What did you do.”

“Nothing,” Harry said unconvincingly.

Hermione narrowed her eyes at him, but then realised she really didn’t have the energy right now to care about his plots. She rolled her eyes and went to wash her hands next to a fidgety Harry.

For a second she could swear she saw the sink moving, before she blinked and everything was normal again. Huh.

Draco’s actual birthday was unfortunately only the day before exams would begin. Fortunately for Hermione, Draco was as focused as she was and so seemed perfectly content with letting the day pass without much thoroughfare and with them mostly hunkered down in their library spot studying.

For Ron’s birthday back in March they’d held a little party back there in the middle of the night. Harry had ferried them all around with his cloak (a gift he’d received anonymously on his return after Christmas) and Hermione had supplied a silencing charm. They’d had chocolate cake supplied by the house elves, told alternating muggle and wizarding ghost stories and then rounded it out with a round of happy birthday and Oh, he’s a jolly good fella. They’d all, giggling, stuffed themselves under the cloak and ran when Ron had insisted that he’d heard Filch coming, even though they never actually saw him as they ran back to Ravenclaw to drop Draco off.

Hermione had sworn that on their way past the forbidden third floor corridor she’d heard growling, but Harry had dismissed it as Hermione just imagining things because of the ghost stories. Hermione had thought that if even Harry Potter was telling you that you were being ridiculous, you were probably being ridiculous.

Back in September when she’d turned twelve, they hadn’t even known each other that well but Ron had still presented her with a candle lit cupcake at breakfast and that had been the first day Draco had sat at Gryffindor table with them. He’d spent the whole time looking over his shoulder waiting for someone to tell him off. Harry had presented her with a badly wrapped package which had turned out to be a very pretty blue parrot feather quill.

So, Hermione didn’t want Draco’s birthday to go completely unacknowledged just because it was badly timed. On the last day of exams they had the afternoon free. Hermione pretended to have forgotten something back in Gryffindor tower right after lunch and asked Draco to come with her to get it. He’d been pretty confused but agreed anyway. This allowed for Harry and Ron to dash of after they’d left and prepare.

On their way back down from Gryffindor tower Hermione lead them instead to an abandoned classroom on the ground floor, much to Draco’s further confusion. Hermione had lied and told him that she’d heard a rumour there was a boggart down there and she wanted to see it. Draco had accepted this is just one of the many extreme things Hermione was prepared to do n the name of education.

Instead of a boggart, Draco opened the door to a flurry of charmed confetti (which floated back to the ceiling after it had fallen so as to fall again) and Ron and Harry shouting Happy Birthday in his face as Ron tried and failed to pop a Party-popper.

“My birthday was last week,” Draco said, stunned.

Hermione laughed. “But we couldn’t celebrate it last week! We had to have a late party.”

“Here,” Harry said grinning and handing Draco a sparkly wrapped (thankfully wrapped by Hermione) present, “It’s from all of us.”

Hermione thought there was certainly a marked change from how Harry had treated Draco at the start of the year. Every now and then the two would even deign to spend one on one time together. Hermione saw this as an obvious spelling of the apocalypse.

Draco was blushing happily as he took the gift, “You really didn’t have to do this for me, you guys.”

Ron snorted, “Wait till you see what it is before you thank us mate.”

Hermione elbowed him, “Shut up, Ronald.”

Hermione had chosen the sort of gift that she thought Draco would like the most. Ron had said that it was too boring to be a present, but then again Hermione and Draco tended to be pretty boring to anyone who didn’t understand him. The sparkly wrapping paper fell away to reveal a beautifully bound set of Alberta Toothill’s One Witches Duel vol. 1,2&3. Draco gasped in delight. Hermione smiled smugly at Ron.

“Well it’s a book for girls,” Ron muttered stubbornly.

“It’s a book about the first woman to win the All-England Duelling competition in history. And she was one of the greatest duellers of all time. These books have some of the best duelling tips in the genre, but most people look them over because they’re written by a woman.” Draco said, absorbed in feeling the spines of the book.

Hermione’s grin was cheek splitting. She loved her friends, “Which is obviously absolutely absurd.”

Harry nodded sagely, “Yeah. Hermione’s terrifying enough and she’s only a first year. Imagine what she could do as a trained dueller.”

They all giggled, and the afternoon dissolved into sunny bliss, the party finally spilling out onto the grounds after the confetti spells started to malfunction and form mountains of the stuff on the floor. Hermione had always assumed that her life would follow a more subdued, lonely heroine plot. Like a Brontë novel. Instead, she seemed to have given up misty moors and being misunderstood for entering the world of Enid Blyton. She couldn’t say she was especially put out about this. By three, they’d decided that it had been long enough since they’d scoffed all of the birthday cake (vanilla, as was Draco’s favourite) that they should go swimming.

It was in the lake, in transfigured swimming costumes, that Hermione had a sudden moment that she would have called numinous if she hadn’t been a staunch atheist.

In truth, she was inclined to call it divine only because she’d had the misfortune as to never have experienced it before.

It was the feeling of having friends, and not being worried that they would give up on her.

She grinned, and splashed Ron in the face.

At the end of term feast, the group positioned themselves strategically with all three Gryffindors on the bench facing the Ravenclaw table and Draco right ahead of them. They spent the whole dinner (including Dumbledore’s slightly frazzled speech) in an elaborate game of charades, with a few confused Hufflepuffs caught in the crossfire before they eventually gave in and moved out of the way.

With clear sight lines the group woefully commiserated their mutual loss through exaggerated gagging gestures and eye rolls. The Slytherins celebrated obnoxiously all night.

Harry, strangely, seemed oddly happy about the results of the house cup “Good for them,” He said, smiling kindly.

There were no lessons on the last day of term, but the train still wasn’t scheduled to leave until 11 am. Hermione decided it was the perfect time to do what she’d been planning all year.

 Hermione had often hit the same wall during her twelve year and ongoing career as A Nosy Person. At one point or another, you would run into a situation that wouldn’t reveal the truth to you no matter how much you snooped or researched or made lists. In these situations, she found you had two options; 1. Let it go; 2. Trap the annoying truth with-holder in a room and bombard them with questions until they crack under pressure and tell you what she want to know.

Hermione wasn’t really in the business of letting things go.

Hermione had managed to lure Harry into an abandoned class room by half past nine, after she’d nagged him sufficiently enough that he’d finally packed his things. She was ashamed to admit that she used the exact same boggart excuse as she’d used on Draco. Thankfully being reckless was Harry’s bread and butter and so he happily stepped foot into the empty room.

Sometimes she wondered if she needed to talk to Harry about not just stepping blindly in to things. But that would make things so much harder for her.

Hermione followed Harry, shut the door and then cast colloportus. Harry spun around upon hearing the distinctive sucking sound of a locking spell being put in to place.

“Er, Hermione?” He said, eyebrows climbing his forehead. “What’s up?”

Hermione laughed exasperatedly and grabbed a chair, pulling it over so that it was positioned in front of the door. She plopped herself down on it and gestured for Harry to do likewise. He just stared at her warily. “Don’t worry Harry. I’m not a death eater or a vampire or whatever else it was you were convinced Professor Vance was. But no, sorry. There isn’t actually a boggart in here.”

“Are you going to rough me up for information, Hermione Granger?” Harry said, Joking nervously. He pushed his hair back from his forehead, but it just flopped back down into his eyes anyway.

“Actually, I was just going to ask you.” She replied, voice flat.

Harry visibly gulped. Then he sighed and reluctantly dragged a chair so that he was situated a few feet from Hermione.

“Is this really necessary?” He said, defeated.

She shrugged, crossing her legs up onto her chair and leaning forward. “It is when you refuse to ever tell the truth.”

“I don’t lie,” Harry spat.

“You don’t have to lie to not be telling the truth.”

Harry nodded in concession, “Fine. But I cant tell you the truth."

“Why the hell not?”

“Because it could be dangerous for you.”

“Did someone tell you that it would be dangerous for someone else to know?”

Harry frowned, “No. No one else knows anything.”

“So everything you’re doing is just guess work?”

Harry ran a hand over his eyes, “You don’t know the half of it.”  

Hermione rolled her eyes. “So It’s probably actually safer for you to tell me. No offence, Harry, but you aren’t exactly a master chess player.”

“If I wanted a master chess player, shouldn’t I just go and tell Ron?”

Hermione shrugged, giving up a half smile, “You can go tell Ron if you want. But I’m the one who has you currently trapped in a classroom.” He laughed, “Harry. I want to help you.”

“I believe you,” Harry said, the green eyes that contrasted so heavily with his brown skin boring into her own chocolate eyes. He was looking for something, “I’m just not sure which you I’m actually believing.”

She pursed her lips, trying to follow what he was saying, “Why would there be two me’s?”

“Because I’m a time traveller.” Harry stated bluntly, no indication in his tone that he was actually revealing an astounding thing, “And therefore I’ve known you before.”

“You know me in the future?” Hermione exclaimed, thoughts scattered in a thousand directions.

Harry shook his head, but the pursed his lips in frustration, “Well, sort of. It’s like..” He sighed, heavily, “It’s not like Back to the Future time travel.”

Hermione had only seen that movie once, but she nodded anyway for him to go in.

“It’s like I lived out everything the first time, okay.” Harry said, getting animated in his attempt to have Hermione understand, “I had the first eleven years with my aunt and uncle, then I went to Hogwarts. I did all seven years at Hogwarts. With you. And with Ron and Draco and everyone else that’s here." He frowned, “Though we weren’t friends with Draco last time. I’m, er, pretty surprised that happened actually.” He rubbed his temple sheepishly, “And then I—” Harry stopped. He turned to stare out of the window. It faced out onto the front lawns. The forbidden forest loomed large on the horizon. “Then I died.”

Hermione’s breathe caught in her throat. Whatever she’d expected (from werewolf to eldritch being) she hadn’t expected that.

“When I was seventeen.” Harry clarified “May of our seventh year.” He frowned again. “Not that we spent much time at school that year.”

Hermione was going to unpick that statement later. In that moment she said, “Where did you die?” instead.

“Here. At Hogwarts.” Harry said gruffly, eyes still trained on the forest. He was silent for a few long moments and Hermione let him gather up the courage to finish the story. “There were…. extenuating circumstances around my death. The way it happened, it would have probably meant I could have survived. When I died I went to this heaven sort of place.” He finally looked at her again to see if she was following, “I guess it was a sort of purgatory or waiting room, I don’t now. I’ve been looking up a lot of afterlife theories in the library all year but I’m still not certain. It looked like kings cross station, but empty and stark white. And I knew somehow that if I wanted to I could just….go back.” Harry’s hands were twisting in his lap and Hermione desperately wished she was close enough to reach out and hold his hand, “I knew I had to go back to you all and so that’s what I did. What I tried to do, anyway.”

He went silent again. Hermione pressed him gently, “How did you end up…. Time travelling?”

“I had become something called the master of death at that point.” Harry said, snorting lightly, “It’s like… Have you ever read Lord of the Rings? Well its that sort of ‘one ring to rule them all’ thing. I’d collected these objects,” He shrugged awkwardly, “Anyway I think that having that power or whatever it is meant that when I had this fleeting thought,” his voice cracked, “that I wished I could see my family again. It. Well it let that happen. Instead of waking up back where I died I—”

“You appeared out of no where on Platform 9 and ¾ last September, eleven-years-old again.” Hermione supplied, mind flickering back to the first time she’d seen Harry all the way back at the beginning of the year.

He smiled ruefully at her, “I knew you hadn’t let it go.”

“I haven’t let any of it go. You’re terrible at subtlety Harry James Potter.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have told you my full name.” Harry said rolling his eyes. “You just use it to shame me.”

Hermione shrugged lightly, “So. The diadem and whatever we got from that house in London, a locket was it? Anyway, those objects. Are they the objects that you’re talking about? Are you trying to get back?”

Harry shook his head, “No. The objects that I think got me here were called hallows. The things we got this year are called Horcruxes. They’re much, much worse.”

“Very alliterative of your narrative, Harry.” Hermione said.

“Yeah well, I can always count on my life to be interesting at least.” He said wryly. “They’re pieces of Voldemort’s soul.”

Hermione choked on air. They were going to have to also have a talk about revealing world-altering information with tact. “And where in god’s name are they now?”

Harry blushed and ducked his head, “Er. Myrtle’s bathroom?”

Hermione threw her hands into the air. She sort of wished she believed in god just so she could renounce him right then and there. “You left dangerous magical objects in a girls lavatory?”

“Actually I dropped dangerous magical objects down a password operated secret passage way hidden in a girls lavatory,” Harry said, voice sarcastic even though she was sure it was the truth.

“You are so goddamn strange,” She told him. They stared at each other, expressionless, for a few moments. The corners of Harry’s mouth twitched up. She let out a snort which she tried uselessly to hide behind her hand. Then they were both laughing loudly, heads buried in there hands.

After they’d both sobered, and Hermione had given Harry a much needed hug, Harry looked at her wonderingly.

“I’ve been really lucky twice now to have you as my friend, Hermione," He said gratefully.

She patted him on the shoulder, “I’m pretty certain that both times I was just being dragged along out of obligation.”

He grinned at her, “That mean you’re going to help me out this time too, Granger?”

She cuffed his hair lightly and rolled her eyes, “Trial period Potter. I reserve the right to back out of your ridiculousness at any time.”

He chuckled, “Good thing for me your too nosy to ever do that."

She shoved him. He laughed. She unlocked the door just to have something that meant she could turn around and hide her smile.

She was pretty relieved that he wasn’t an eldritch demon.

On the train back the four of them happily squashed into a carriage at the back of the train. A lot had changed in a year. Ron was now rat-less and relaxed in himself. Draco’s hair had thankfully been released from its gel prison (a Ron suggestion) and he now had actual friends instead of just people who followed him around. Harry was visibly lighter this train ride then he had ever been before. He would be spending the summer with a real family, free to see his friends at any time, and with someone who finally knew his secret. All three boys grinned the whole way home.

Hermione Granger had changed too. Not in herself, perhaps, but in the way she saw herself. She found herself grinning endlessly at her boys. In only a year they had taught her that she was someone who could be liked.

Arriving on the platform was bittersweet. It didn’t feel like going home to Hermione but instead as if she was abandoning the first place she’d ever felt truly accepted.

But she would be back. There was nothing in any universe that could stop her.